


Killer Instinct

by scrollgirl



Category: Criminal Minds, Highlander: The Series
Genre: Crossover, Multi, Pre-Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrollgirl/pseuds/scrollgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duncan MacLeod has a killer. Instinct.</p><p>(Spoilers for "Nameless, Faceless", CM 5x01, and general HL Season 6.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killer Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> This is a deleted scene from my [Hotch/MacLeod crossover epic](http://scrollgirl.dreamwidth.org/tag/hotch/macleod) (which isn't getting written). I've polished it up, given it an ending and a darker edge.

He heard the gunshot and saw the sudden bloom of red across Tessa's chest, the shock in her eyes. Jerking awake, Duncan sat up in his bedroll, already groping for his eskrima sticks. Hair prickled at the back of his neck. Danger. Guns. He crouched in the dark of his bedroom, blinking away the familiar nightmare. A gunshot, yes, the gunshot had been real, not a memory. Close by, not outside. Somewhere in the building. Somewhere in his own apartment building, where innocent people slept.

No time for shirt or shoes. He padded quickly through the empty flat to the front door, cracked it open and peered into the corridor. All clear. It was late--very late or very early, depending on one's perspective. He stood in the hall, eyes closed, and played back the sound of the gunshot, trying to determine the direction it had come from.

There. The flat directly across from his own. Duncan hesitated for a brief moment, recalling the building manager telling him when he'd signed the lease that an FBI agent lived across the hall. Merde. The last thing he needed was the FBI asking uncomfortable questions...

"You're a damn fool," he muttered, and kicked open the door. He came in low, muscle memory and instinct taking over. Target: white male, shirtless, with a bloody knife, kneeling over his victim. Target: surprised but recovering, already moving to put the knife to the victim's throat. Not waiting for a hostage stand-off, Duncan closed in hard and fast, heaven and earth: the left stick cracked across the target's left temple, dazing him, the right stick slammed low to break his wrist. The knife went skittering across the room.

The target choked off a scream, falling back on his ass, cradling his arm. Duncan hesitated, the second time in ten seconds. A mistake. The bastard wasn't done--he grabbed the table's edge and hauled himself to his feet. He reached for the gun, but Duncan was on him before he could turn it his way, sticks scissoring. Left forearm, gun flying. Ribs, ribs, left knee. The target grunted and fell to his knees, but pain didn't seem to register with him--he launched himself at Duncan, murderous rage in his eyes. Twisting aside almost too late, Duncan cracked him hard across the temple.

The target dropped like a stone to the floor, but Duncan kept hold of his sticks, torn between suspicion the bastard was playing possum and fear that he'd done him irreparable damage. Six days into a new identity and already he had committed violence.

Two feet away, a man in a black suit was struggling to sit up, his face grey and drawn with pain, his bloody hands pressed hard against the wounds in his belly.

"Hey, take it easy," Duncan said, and took a step closer to him, then froze when the Fed shook his head, agitated. His eyes, black with blown pupils, darted to the unconscious man, to Duncan, back to the unconscious man.

"Suh, suh-ee..." The Fed's harsh panting failed to resolve into intelligible words. Duncan tried hushing him, but the man was desperate to communicate. "See-ree... Ulll..."

Serial. Jesus, Mary, and _Joseph_. The target bunched his muscles, a sprinter in starting position, but Duncan moved faster still. He slammed his knee down on the target's back, driving the air from his lungs. The serial killer--a fucking _serial killer_ \--kicked back with a powerful leg, teeth bared in a ferocious grin. Bloody hell. Had Duncan grown so soft that an enemy could lull him into a false sense of security?

"Keep fighting me and I'll break your neck," he growled, twisting the man's arms up behind his back to immobilise him. It took precious seconds for Duncan to bind the serial killer's hands and feet to his satisfaction, using the Fed's handcuffs and power cords and the killer's own bootlaces--more seconds than he wanted to spare when there was a man bleeding out on the floor beside him.

"I'm losing circulation," the serial killer informed him. His rage had switched off like a light, his tone now calm and matter-of-fact. For a moment, he didn't look any more dangerous than the next middle-aged guy off the street.

"You'll live," said Duncan, and grabbed the Fed's weapon off the table. "Move and I shoot you in the head--or maybe the kneecaps. I'm not particular." He knelt next to the Fed and checked his wounds. Still bleeding, with no sign of stopping. Duncan snagged a black hoodie off the floor--he didn't even want to know why a serial killer would take off his shirt to murder an FBI agent--and used it as a makeshift bandage. "You'll live too," he told the Fed, despite the poor fellow's pallour and trembling limbs.

Snagging the cell phone that had fallen under the table, he debated calling 911 for a moment, then scrolled through the contacts until he found "FBI Quantico". The Feds would be better equipped to deal with a serial killer than the local police, as well as ensure that their injured colleague got first priority with the ambulance. "Sounds like they're sending an army," he said, one hand keeping pressure on the Fed's wounds and the other keeping the gun trained on the serial killer. "We'll just sit here, nice and quiet, and wait for them."

The Fed, clinging to consciousness by his fingernails, grunted acknowledgment. The serial killer turned his head to look at Duncan, a thoughtful expression softening the thin slash of his mouth. "You must be the new neighbour. You weren't supposed to move in until tomorrow."

Duncan shrugged. "Surprise." Under his hand, he could feel the Fed's body shaking and so risked a swift glance only to realise he was _laughing_. "Good God, man, save your breath."

"S'funny," the Fed gasped, barely audible, then finally, finally passed out.

The serial killer didn't find it funny at all--his expression turned ugly with hate and rage. "Untie me and I won't kill you after I escape," he hissed. "Untie me and I won't hunt you down."

Another man might have felt a shiver of fear at a killer's dark promise, but Duncan MacLeod had faced enough evil in his centuries to become fairly inured against threats of violence. "Tempting as that sounds, I'll pass. Wouldn't be very neighbourly of me to let you get away, now would it?" He cocked his head, hearing sirens. "You have about sixty seconds before SWAT has you in custody. You going to make a break for it?"

Again, the monster slipped beneath the surface of the man's thin, pale face, the extraordinary masked by the ordinary. But Duncan had seen his true self. "You play the tough guy," the monster smirked, studying Duncan and the gun that never wavered. "But you're not as eager to shoot me as you'd like me to believe. I can read you like a book."

"Something's being lost in translation," Duncan replied steadily. "I'm not eager to shoot you, no, but I won't hesitate to pull the trigger should you try to escape. Serial killers don't feel remorse. They're rabid dogs that need putting down."

"You've put down rabid dogs before, have you?" The monster began to smile, a gleeful little curl of his lips. "You have, you have! I can see it in your eyes."

Duncan's control was fraying. The monster could see his tells. "Thirty seconds, you son of a bitch."

"You want to believe it's a mercy, putting a poor beast out of its misery. You don't know how right you are!" The monster laughed, raspy and low. He sounded chillingly like Connor. "You're like me, an executioner," he taunted. "Sanctioned by a higher authority. By Fate herself. I was chosen, chosen to bring death to the weak. Every kill feeds me."

Lights flashed outside, painting the Fed's living room walls in red and white. The ambulance, not SWAT.

"Don't," warned Duncan, when the monster dug his socked toes into the carpet. The bootlaces binding his ankles had somehow come loose, Duncan saw with a jolt. How the hell...?

"The weak die and the strong survive," came the growl, canines gleaming red-white. And when the paramedics--fucking idiots, why hadn't they waited for SWAT?--came hurrying through the busted front door, the monster leaped on them quicker than they could scream.

But the man leasing the flat across the hall from an FBI agent was not the 24-year-old Georgetown poli-sci grad student that he claimed to be.

He was Duncan MacLeod. Immortal. Stronger and faster and deadlier than any mortal killer that preyed on his fellow man.

"Surprise," he murmured, and snapped the man's neck with familiar ease.


End file.
